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FBI Agents Don't Have Email Access 308

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the lazy-it dept.
the_bikeman writes "According to CNN, many FBI agents do not have access to an email account, and only 100 of the 2000 New York FBI agents have a Internet-ready mobile phone. Spokeswoman Cathy Milhoan said 'e-mail addresses are still being assigned, adding that the city bureau's 2,000 employees would all have accounts by the end of the year.'"
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FBI Agents Don't Have Email Access More

FBI Agents Don't Have Email Access

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  • How convenient! (Score:5, Funny)

    by BadAnalogyGuy ( 945258 ) <BadAnalogyGuy@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @09:35AM (#14963440)
    I have 4 Gmail accounts with 500 invitations left each! How many Get Out Of Jail Free cards can I buy?

  • It's ALL Vanity (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mattygfunk1 ( 596840 ) * on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @09:35AM (#14963442)
    Agent.Mulder@gmail.com just doesn't have the bragging rights.

  • It's Clear (Score:5, Funny)

    by pete-classic ( 75983 ) <hutnick@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @09:35AM (#14963443) Homepage Journal
    It's clear that the greatest protection our civil rights have is abject incompetence.

    -Peter

    • Re:It's Clear (Score:5, Funny)

      by Aspirator ( 862748 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @09:41AM (#14963490)
      I'll bet most of us would like an employer who told us
      by the end of the year
      to get 2000 email accounts set up.

      • Re:It's Clear (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Bin_jammin ( 684517 )
        "I set up 40 email accounts this week, that's one per hour, we're right on schedule for the rest of the year!" I can see the glowing progress reports now....
      • The real bottleneck will be teaching them all to read and write.

        -Eric

      • I'll bet most of us would like an employer who told us by the end of the year to get 2000 email accounts set up.
        I've read this story yesterday, and what struck me, was 'how much are they paying for each account?' and 'which Republican donor is milking that contract?'

        I'd like to say that it must be cronyism at it worst, but sadly I cannot.

    • The limit on growth of a bureaucracy is the competence of it's denizens. Money is no limit -- it is raised by taxes and squabbled over. The least competant (by internal stds) lose. Popularity is no limit.

      The EU, and to a decreasing extent, the UK, .au and .ca have larger bureaucracies than the US because government employment has higher social status so it attracts more talented individuals.

      Do you really want a more competant government? You will just get more of it, until it expands to it's limit of

    • If that were true then people who think GW is incompetent would feel safe indeed.

    • You laugh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jfengel ( 409917 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @10:28AM (#14963792) Homepage Journal
      You laugh, but every time I hear people convinced that the FBI/CIA is maintaining a detailed file on them, I just know that there's no way either organization has that kind of manpower to care about them.

      Not that I'm thrilled that they seem to be intent on gathering scattershot information when they can (taking pictures of protesters, granting themselves the right to listen in to phone calls). They don't even have time to process the information they have.

  • pre-9/11 (Score:5, Funny)

    by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @09:36AM (#14963451)
    "FBI agents not having e-mail or Internet access is much too much a pre-9/11 mentality."

    Funny, I thought it was a pre-1995 mentality.

    • Re:pre-9/11 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheRealMindChild ( 743925 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @09:56AM (#14963601) Homepage Journal
      You know... you crack a joke, but I have to deal with this seriously way too often.

      Recently our boss decided that any account that we have on our web applications needed a mode of contact. Something consistant for everyone. We debated a little, but the obvious solution was to simply require an email address, which in turn becomes their username. I mean it's 2006... who DOESN'T have an email address.

      A week later, we get an excited new client. It is my job to set up the handful of user accounts for our webapps... and I simply boggled at the first guys response when I asked for his email address:

      "3657 Washington Roa..."
      "No, your Email address."
      "3657 Wash..."
      "EEEEEEEEEEEE Mail address!"
      "What do you mean?"
      "What do you mean what do I mean? What is your email address?"
      "I don't know what that is"

      He DOESNT KNOW WHAT THAT IS!!! That's like saying you don't know what a road is. Someone please explain to me how and why such people still exist? Keep in mind, these people are going to CONSTANTLY use a WEB application, yet ... no... idea... of... what... an... email... is.

      *boggle*
      • I work in 2006, among people who supposedly have college degrees. And yet I wish had a nickel for every time I've sent someone a 100+ page document via email, only to have them *FAX* me back changes.

        -Eric

        • Re:"But can't I fax it to you?" (Score:4, Funny)

          by caffeination ( 947825 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @10:50AM (#14963948)
          You have it easy. I work in 2056, among college graduates like in your job, but in my job, monkeys have taken over the world. It's not all bad, I mean even these monkeys know to use email for big papers like the ones you mention, but they fucking stink of shit. I mean jeez!

          I would have got a job in a better timeline, but that's the price of taking a liberal arts degree..

        • And yet I wish had a nickel for every time I've sent someone a 100+ page document via email, only to have them *FAX* me back changes.

          Actually, I think this is an area where Outlook Express (and probably other email clients) suck. Here is what happens:

          Person receives email with attachment

          Person opens attachment, makes changes and saves attachment

          Person forwards email back to original sender.

          Did the original sender get the modified document? No. Yet, most people don't understand why this does not work

      • Wow, I had that happen to me one time when I told someone I could fax or email them a form and they asked what email was, but that was back in 2001.. I still thought it was amazing but in 2006, you would have to have your head in the sand....
      • Who the heck cares if they don't have internet ready phones? That's like whing that they don't all have Ipod Nanos!

  • No email is fine by me... (Score:5, Funny)

    by JargonScott ( 258797 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @09:38AM (#14963466)
    I prefer my FBI agents to be out attempting to protect me, not forwarding something to their 10 closest friends so Jesus will bless the kittens that day.
    • By that rationale you don't want them to have access to phones either, in case they spend all their day talking sports with their friends, or traditional mail, in case they waste their time corresponding with a pen pal in Australia...
      • Please, you can't still believe that email is a productive form of communication? For every benefit that email (and the internet in general) used to bring, there is 5x the baggage of problems.

        I like to think that FBI agents are busy in some sense their entire shift. I don't want to think of them wasting time as much as any of us are right now, and I'm home sick. Please don't bust my bubble of comfortable misconception.

        I was employed to monitor the web and email traffic at a medium sized bank (~3400 emplo
  • all FBI agents are certified in morse code and at least half of them have some training in semaphore

    and the next highest placing class out of quantico will be introduced to the fancy new 'telephone' that is rumored that a guy name alexander graham bell has perfected
    • all FBI agents are certified in morse code and at least half of them have some training in semaphore

      and the next highest placing class out of quantico will be introduced to the fancy new 'telephone' that is rumored that a guy name alexander graham bell has perfected

      Next thing you know, the FBI agent's time will be taken up by nickelodeons and vaudeville, rather than the pursuit of those dastardly beermakers that roam the streets freely, corrupting the morals of women and making shiftless drunkards out of th

  • Where did all the money go? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @09:39AM (#14963469)
    "We just don't have the money, and that is an endless stream of complaints that come from the field," he said.

    So let me get this straight, $9 billion goes missing in Iraq, the war has cost US taxpayers about $250 billion so far, oil companies have record profit$, our national debt ceiling was raised to $9 trillion and we can't afford to supply email to the FBI?
    What is going on? And, does anyone even care?
    • Let's all give them GMail invites. Oh wait, I guess that wouldn't be good for top secret clearance data. Oh well...
    • Seriously. It's almost enough to make you think the guys running this country are corrupt or something...

    • I think you're taking the quote a bit out of context, and even if you aren't I do not see that your argument is necessarily true. Let me provide a counterexample to show you what I am thinking.

      The FBI has a budget of x dollars. In that budget, they have to determine necessary expenses for all of their operations for the year. Which would do more to protect and help us as a country: email for all the employees or the ability to hire 2 extra people in the field? Couple that with exactly what you quoted

      • Re:Where did all the money go? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by interiot ( 50685 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @10:10AM (#14963685) Homepage
        Given that gigs and gigs of GMail are available to end-users for free, and HTTPS-secured web-mail is available to end-users for free as well, how expensive can it be for the FBI to set up email addresses? Answer: email is nearly free. It's not really a cost issue, it's a management or incompetence issue.
        • You are not seriously naive enough to believe that technology is free are you?

          Behind every tech, whether free or not, is a cost. In the case of the FBI, I personally can see an email service necessitating many additional costs, such as: IT personnel to manage the service, hardware to run the service, AND (a biggie) securing the service from inside and outside. That's not even taking into account encryption setup and maintenence that you can bet they are going demand before even considering such a service.

          If
        • I think you need to have a talk with out IT Director and Exchange Administrator. Maybe you could solver the discrepency of "We don't have enough money in our budget for a faster server with more storage for our emails."
          • Of course email costs something (apparently I should have bolded "free to end users"), but what company has no email for new-hires, even if it's slow, requires users to constantly delete email to keep under the storage quota, isn't remotely interoperable, and it constantly deletes things as spam?

            My main point in bringing up email's relative low cost (again: not free), is that the comparison of saying that you can hire two more field agents for the price of email seems bunk. Yes, initial setup, and ongoin

            • Hell, even giving new hires email that's not backed up, and whose mail server is down 50% of the time... that's still better than telling new hires that they can't email their boss at all. (I mean, any random non-backed-up non-redundant mail server can be set up with parts from a dumpster, with a maximum of two man-weeks of IT time)
      • Which would do more to protect and help us as a country: email for all the employees or the ability to hire 2 extra people in the field? Couple that with exactly what you quoted.

        First of all, I would think that e-mail was a NECESSARY tool for anyone working today. Rapid communication is going to help protect this country by getting the information to the agents in the field. 2 extra people is not going to help if they can't even coordinate their communications properly. If you are trying to say they

        • Actually, I don't think a centralized email system within the FBI is a necessary work tool. Is it desired? Yes. Would such an ability provide benefit to agents to get their jobs done mroe effectively? Definitely. Would it do more than anything else on the laundry list of things to be funded? I honestly do not know. I wasn't intending to argue that email is a waste of money, but just that there is a potential for other avenues of spending to yield more results. However, to take on the last part of yo

      • But you also have to take into account the amount of time they currently - presumably - spend typing out memos on three carbons, placing two in an envelop and placing them in an out-tray for delivery the next day.

        Then the time they spend opening post in the morning, and filing it and buying filing cabinets

        It's easy to take a crack at e-mail as a productivity killer. But I worked in an office before it came along and there was an entire internal bureaucracy devoted to transporting mail, opening it, filing
    • What is going on? And, does anyone even care?

      No, they don't. People are going to look at this and say "I have e-mail, why don't they?" and then they are going to think about it for about 2.2 seconds until the teaser for American Idol, The Apprentice, or Survivor come on and they forget all about it.
    • Surely you aren't suggesting that in this post [ups.com]-911 [porsche.com] world, your loving president should be spending money on anything other than the security of the homeland? Imagine what those COMMIES [cuba.com] in the LIBERAL MEDIA! [wikipedia.org] would do to him if spending on Protecting America's Children, Puppies and Kittens [dhs.gov] were to fail to keep pace with Moore's Law?
    • Dreamhost is running their 777 deal again, so they can get web hosting with unlimited email accounts for just $7 a year!!! Yippieeeeeeeeeee!

  • This makes sense actually (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @09:43AM (#14963509) Journal
    In a world where secrecy is necessary, what you whisper goes unrecorded, but what you put in an email gets published just when you need it to never have been written down....

    With record keeping comes accountability... is it any wonder they don't write things down? Until rather recently, there was no satisfactory manner to keep such communications to mobile devices secure/encrypted. If anyone knows if the govmint is spying on people, the FBI should. Makes you wonder..... ????

  • RTFA. We're talking about law enforcement. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @09:43AM (#14963510)
    All of the bureau's employees have secure mail accounts for use within that organization. Publicly available accounts, and accounts from which bureau employees can send mail to the public are indeed more complex (think about the tracking they'd require), and would require a lot more than typical corporate non-training when it comes to what they can or should do with that type of communication.

    One mis-step in a CC or Reply-All and you could completely torpedo an investigation or a trial. Just look at what one lackluster prosecutor did with some ill-conceived e-mail sent to prospective witnesses during the ongoing 9/11 trial happening right now. This subject is a lot more complicated than meets the eye.
    • I don't know if intentionally exposing them to forbidden court material is "ill-conceived". It's kind of hard to accidentally send transcripts to witnesses... I'm sure she'll get to write a book about the trial.
    • You know, I would be a lot more worried about all these domestic spying scandals if I thought for a second that any of these agencies had the COMPETENCE to spy on their own asses with mirrors and flashlights.

      -Eric

    • I wouldn't be surprised if we see more organizations go this way: internal email and limited external email, just to save on the time wasted.
    • The article isn't clear, but from what I've seen it sounds like these agents don't have any unclassified-access computer connected to the Internet on their desks at all. That means that the vast amount of information indexed by Google is unavailable to them.

      No, you can't ask Google "Where is Osama bin Laden?" But actual intelligence work assumes that you know about the real world. If you want to check a phone book, look on a map, check a dictionary, it really sucks to have to replicate those features on the
    • I agree with you that it is alot more complicated then meets the eye. From personal experience I can say that law enforcement that cannot get an agency e-mail account, will get a public (web accessible) e-mail account elsewhere. People have a great need to communicate (by any means possible). So being overly protective with your agencies e-mail system, will lead to use of public e-mail systems.

    • That's Just Crap... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kozar_The_Malignant ( 738483 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @12:34PM (#14964640)

      >look at what one lackluster prosecutor did with some ill-conceived e-mail

      Jesus H. Armadillo! Are we going to drag our whole government operation down to the level of the least competent person in the organization? I have worked in companies that had the philosophy of creating new restrictions every time some idiot abused or misused some tool or benefit. This served to limit the ability of the competent to actually get things done.

      After a while, I got so frustrated that I quit and found a better job. There is a better way to run things: Fire The Morons! This "lackluster prosecutor" has at least seven years of university education and a six-figure salary. Am I wrong to expect competence and accountability? It's not like there's a shortage of lawyers in this country. Fire the fool and hire someone that can follow simple instructions.

      The FBI is supposed to have the best and the brightest cops in the country. If they can't be trusted not to send the case file on some mass murderer as an email attachment to the guy's uncle, we're just screwed anyway. If I hear one more time, that we can't get rid of some idiot, because we have all this time and money invested in his training, I'm going to scream. We may have spent a lot of time and money, but it didn't work. Fire The Morons! I guarantee we'll be better off.

      Thank you for listening. I'm going to go take my medication now.

      • "Are we going to drag our whole government operation down to the level of the least competent person in the organization? "

        Yes! In fact, we're going to put that psrson in charge!

  • Email, problem. Cell phones, not a problem. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pla ( 258480 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @09:46AM (#14963530) Journal
    and only 100 of the 2000 New York FBI agents have a Internet-ready mobile phone.

    So? I make my living as a geek, and don't have an internet-ready cell phone.

    Why would I pay more, for a service redundant with something I already have, yet with a far lower quality presentation?

    When I want to do something online, I'll use a PC. When I want to call someone, I'll use my cell phone. They each serve entirely separate purposes, and as long as my eyes work better scanning large surfaces than a 1.5 inch square, they will continue serving different purposes.
    • Repeat after me, the Web is not the Internet

      • Re:Email, problem. Cell phones, not a problem. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by pla ( 258480 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @10:18AM (#14963733) Journal
        Repeat after me, the Web is not the Internet

        No kidding... Your point?

        I also don't want to read email (which increasingly includes web-like formatting), chat on IRC, or read UseNET on a 1.5 inch screen; And my phone doesn't make the best destination for downloading files via FTP or any P2P; And it takes far too long to enter alphanumeric data to make anything even remotely interactive (ie, ssh) useful on a cellphone.

        I suppose getting an RSS feed might prove vaguely useful, but not nearly enough to justify the increased expense - And y'know, with a government that can't seem to spend our tax dollars fast enough, I can't say it really bothers me that the FBI hasn't caught on to yet another way to waste our money.

        So, repeat after me - Contextually useless distinctions don't require enumeration.
        • My phone is a Nokia 6600 [nokia.co.uk] with a 176 x 208 pixel screen.

          I use python code on my phone to inject items into my phone's calendar, including via email (i.e. I send an email to 6600@domain.com with a specific format and it will get into my calendar)

          My phone has IMAP capability which has proved extremely useful.

          My phone has an SSH client which has saved me hundreds of miles of travel in it's time.

          However, the Opera Web Browser is particularly useless. Sites rarely look good / work well.

        • Dude.

          Get a sidekick II.

          I have email (both pop3 and imap clients), as well as text messaging, AIM, web browsing, and an ssh/telnet client, so if I really wanted (and I have before) I can log in and read my mail with pine.

          Plus, qwerty keyboard and big screen.

          ~W
    • The more you try continuity of service, the more diverse the applications you consider bringing to bear.
      I've got a browser on my mobile phone, simply because I may need to pick up mail when I'm way away from any PC. Using a PDA with ssh on it simply lets me use a text terminal when I need interactive shells on the servers, in case the rest of the kit is unavailable (or I'm miles away from anywhere, and unexpectedly need to work via shell).

      Yes, they may be redundant, but when your main access channels are d
  • Just what the FBI needs! Cleartext transmissions transmitted wirelessly over the public cloud! (insert GPG fanboy banter below)

  • Boo Hoo (Score:4, Insightful)

    by codepunk ( 167897 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @09:47AM (#14963535)
    Boo Hoo, our exchange licenses costs to much. Us poor folks at the FBI could not possibly just load up a linux box and postfix. I love the comment that the one senator made about this, our agents need better access to technology.

    Clue: It is right under your nose, use it!

  • Jack Bauer? (Score:2, Funny)

    by timdorr ( 213400 ) *
    I dunno about this, because Jack Bauer definitely has a nice PDA. It apparently can hack into computers, control terrorist remote bombs, and self destruct the memory card. These sort of things should be standard issue!
  • This slashdot headline makes it sound like we're back in 1995.

    Christine Monaco, a spokeswoman for the FBI in New York, said Monday that all FBI agents can communicate with each other via a secure internal e-mail system, and about 75 percent of the New York office's employees have outside e-mail accounts.

    "The outside e-mail accounts have to be separately funded," she said.

    Sounds like a nasty mixture of bureaucracy and inefficiency to me. Is there a difference between employees and agents? (do cleaners need e

  • I wonder if this is really that good a thing. I would bet that some people would love to get their hands of the login info of an FBI agent -- it would provide access to data for some serious ID theft, terrorism, fraud, organized crime, etc. All it would take is one agent succumbing to a bit of social engineering.

    The problem with the FBI using public protocols on public networks is that it opens non-public data to some serious technological and human security holes.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @10:04AM (#14963653)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Parent is 100% true!

      If people had any idea how much burearucratic bullshit that goes on in the FBI, you would have a totally different opinion of them. I find it amazing they are able to do any work at all with all of the political infighting and constant management changes that goes on within the FBI.

      If you want to know what really goes on with the FBI, take your local agent out for a drink sometime!

  • Would it be just like the movies? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jim in Buffalo ( 939861 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @10:08AM (#14963677)
    If they did get email addresses, would it be just like the way email is in the movies, where the font is 24-point white or yellow lettering that scrolls in real-time across a black background that takes up the entire screen?
  • ...Or what? Spokeswoman Cathy Milhoan said 'e-mail addresses are still being assigned, adding that the city bureau's 2,000 employees would all have accounts by the end of the year.
    Big ISPs add this many email users in a few hours -and they don't have the advantage of importing from an existing HR system with people details. (I guess the FBI doesn't either)
    FBI's IT is, once again, proven to be shockingly primitive. Maybe instead of spending $2 Trillion on Iraq (which is creating a terrorist breeding g
  • They probably have got email accounts set up for them, they just don't know how to use them. It's no wonder when they keep typing in things like "Job@3:14" to contact people.

  • Not to defend Gov't stuff... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ursabear ( 818651 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @10:24AM (#14963767) Homepage Journal
    The CIA, FBI, and any other governmental agency should have efficient, extremely-monitored, very safe email and email systems. It is very important that modern communications are fostered and maintained in governmental activities.

    I know from personal experience that government-funded/government-used technical systems are generally either:
    1)Ultra-over-engineered to be sure that the system/thing is ultra-safe or ultra-reliable or ultra-accountable
    2)Woefully inadequate because the person(s) in the bureaucracy don't have the tech expertise to foster the effort correctly - and yet place massive, uninformed, and inappropriate amounts of pressure on the worker bees to get the job done as per the way the non-tech person thinks it needs to go.
    3)Many projects die on the vine because mis-direction (and management that honestly doesn't have the knowledge they need to lead the effort) makes the project wander in the desert for huge periods of time.
    4)I could go on...

    But in all fairness, governmental technical efforts have many different and sometimes unique pressures on them. The government literally has to have permission from someone to do anything with public systems. The public (rightfully) wants as much transparency and accountability as possible in governmental efforts - which means everything is debated, re-documented, justified, cleared, reviewed, managed, re-managed, scrutinized, over-then-under-funded, micro-managed, and finally finger-pointed-to-somebody-else'd when the project doesn't go right.

    Our government cannot (or doesn't know how to) operate as smaller, more agile private businesses work. The pressure and accountability of every move has created a monster of over-administered and over-micro-managed web of forms, functions, procedures, and other things...

    What's the solution? Frankly, I don't know. I want my government to be accountable, and I want the government to be "of the people, by the people", but I also want it to be intelligent, well-led, and a great deal less dysfunctional. If only governmental technical tasks could be more agile...
    • 1)Ultra-over-engineered to be sure that the system/thing is ultra-safe or ultra-reliable or ultra-accountable
      2)Woefully inadequate because the person(s) in the bureaucracy don't have the tech expertise to foster the effort correctly - and yet place massive, uninformed, and inappropriate amounts of pressure on the worker bees to get the job done as per the way the non-tech person thinks it needs to go.
      3)Many projects die on the vine because mis-direction (and management that honestly doesn't have the knowled

  • Access (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anne_Nonymous ( 313852 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @10:26AM (#14963775) Homepage Journal
    >> many FBI agents do not have access to an email account

    Not true, not true. They have access to many email accounts, they just don't have accounts of their own.
  • The FBI still employs typing pools and all sorts of old fashioned things. The old guard is still in charge at the bureau.
  • ... that Jack Bauer's not in the FBI!

  • I don't get it (Score:4, Funny)

    by iminplaya ( 723125 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @12:18PM (#14964517) Journal
    They have access to my email...

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